Photography

Sometimes a demurral speaks volumes, as I discovered at the Metropolitan Museum of Art this weekend. Me and my spouse dropped in to catch Naked Before the Camera, a pocket-sized exhibition of photographic nudes culled from the Met’s own holdings. The show is smart and informative, combining names from the arts canon (Eakins,…

On recent sleepless nights I’ve been haunted by an image of a person I’ve come to know well. The man has the face of a pugilist; tall and long-limbed, he stands with his hands behind his head wearing nothing but a pair of boots and a taunting, defiant stare. This portrait of Frank O’Hara, by…

The leaving is the hardest part. Call me complacent, or merely a homebody—whether departing for Rome, Beijing or even upstate New York, a mourning state comes over me whenever I must leave Manhattan. Maybe it’s always hard because I can’t forget that this was where my life truly began, which means that all its signposts—its…

Alvin Baltrop took the long view. I relish his head-spinning panoramas of places that no longer exist; Baltrop’s camera captured the looming gilders inside abandoned hangars and the wide expanses of wooden piers along the Hudson in the West Village, ones that hadn’t seen a ship’s arrival in many a moon. But look closely, and…

You’ve only until January 9 to catch John Baldessari: Pure Beauty at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His work, boldly visual and laugh-out-loud funny, ranges over all mediums; some of us find such precociousness a bonus. Go.

You’ve only 2 days left to catch Philippe Halsman’s Jump at the Laurence Miller Gallery. The photographer hit on a unique way to make his subjects drop their inhibitions, and the results are a marvel. The show biz types don’t surprise nearly as much as folks like the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Richard Nixon…

The man who inspired my favorite film musical now has an exhibit of his fashion photographs at New York’s International Center of Photography. AVEDON FASHION 1944-2000 runs May 15 through September 6. Whether Richard Avedon was shooting models or indigents, few could couple style and subtext so beguilingly. Viva Black and White! Above, Veruschka, dress by…